Mr. Chair, I would like to confirm for the purpose of the people who are watching, particularly, that Parliament created the charter. The Supreme Court ultimately would arbitrate whether or not government decisions were compliant with the charter. It wasn't limited only to those people who had the means to engage private counsel. The court challenges program was designed so that people who didn't have the means to get private counsel would be able to exercise their charter rights as citizens of Canada. The court challenges program offers that.
Its cancellation, particularly in the face of the arguments that have been put by the former chairman of the Treasury Board and the Prime Minister as to why we would offer an opportunity for a Canadian to sue the government, basically denies a fundamental understanding of what Parliament decided in terms of the charter and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role and the relationship of Parliament to government and the charter. The court challenges program is simply an unfortunate victim of that ideologically driven mistake.